Dallas program treats prostitutes as sex crime victims

JEFF CARLTON, ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published
6:30 am CST, Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Social workers Aleba Croker, left, and Janie Metinger,﻿ comfort a 17-year-old arrested for prostitution as part of an intervention program in Dallas﻿.﻿ Rather than classifying prostitutes as criminals, the Dallas police-led program is treating them as sex crime victims. ﻿ less

Social workers Aleba Croker, left, and Janie Metinger,﻿ comfort a 17-year-old arrested for prostitution as part of an intervention program in Dallas﻿.﻿ Rather than classifying prostitutes ... more

Photo: LM Otero, Associated Press

Photo: LM Otero, Associated Press

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Social workers Aleba Croker, left, and Janie Metinger,﻿ comfort a 17-year-old arrested for prostitution as part of an intervention program in Dallas﻿.﻿ Rather than classifying prostitutes as criminals, the Dallas police-led program is treating them as sex crime victims. ﻿ less

Social workers Aleba Croker, left, and Janie Metinger,﻿ comfort a 17-year-old arrested for prostitution as part of an intervention program in Dallas﻿.﻿ Rather than classifying prostitutes ... more

Photo: LM Otero, Associated Press

Dallas program treats prostitutes as sex crime victims

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DALLAS — It was nearly midnight in a cramped mobile courtroom in the back of an 18-wheeler, and a prostitute in a Tweety Bird shirt was apologizing to a judge for falling asleep during her hearing.

She hadn't slept for three days and was coming down from a crack high, she explained. The combination left her too impaired to make a choice that only Dallas offers prostitutes: Go to rehab or go to jail.

With those options, the city is taking a new approach to the world's oldest profession. Police treat prostitutes as sex crime victims, offering many a chance to clean up and get off the streets.

The program's advocates acknowledge its success has been limited — about half of the 375 women have chosen rehab, and just 21 have turned their lives around. But authorities say they're gaining the women's trust and have gotten leads on unsolved crimes.

‘We are the pioneers'

The program could soon spread beyond Dallas. More than 200 law enforcement agents from the U.S. and Canada attended the National Prostitution Diversion conference here in November. Since then, groups from Edmonton, Atlanta and Fort Worth have asked for more information about the program.

“We are the pioneers, I suppose,” said Renee Breazeale, program director for Homeward Bound, a nonprofit detoxification and counseling center in Dallas. “It's the only police-led program and represents a change of culture for law enforcement.”

Truck stop roundup

The program starts with a monthly roundup of prostitutes in an area health officials consider the national epicenter of syphilis. Dallas vice police have identified more than 1,300 prostitutes working four truck stops that serve more than 2,000 trucks a day.

Under the Prostitution Diversion Initiative, police set up a staging area once a month in a vacant lot near the truck stops. Four mobile command trucks surround folding tables and chairs where social service workers set up shop. Work usually begins about 7 p.m. and runs until 3 a.m.

Police confiscate the prostitutes' property and interview them for information about criminal activity, such as whether pimps are running underage prostitutes out of area motels. Then social service workers assess the women's drug, alcohol and mental health counseling needs. The women get tests for sexually transmitted diseases and other medical care at a mobile health clinic.

The last stop of the night is the mobile courtroom. If the women have no felony warrants and seem sincere, the judge gives them the opportunity to avoid jail and enter rehab. After 45 days of inpatient counseling, they receive help with education, child care and housing.

From teens to 60s

Even though the program's rate of success is modest at best, there is long-term value in cultivating prostitutes as sources, Dallas police Sgt. Louis Felini said. Police have developed leads on a couple of unsolved homicides, and the women are learning to trust officers.

The prostitutes range in age from their teens to their 60s. More than half have children. Nearly all abuse drugs.

“The truck stop prostitute is at the bottom rung of prostitution,” Felini said. “They are trading sex for survival needs: food, a place to sleep.”

Karen Green, 47, works as an advocate for the prostitutes. She was one of them until a prison counseling program helped her clean up 13 years ago.

“People think they are criminals, but they are victims,” Green said. “They've never had a break. They don't know what living right is.”